Daily Maintenance Weigh-In: Monday April 29th, 2013

I am down again today.  Scale said 135.4....

Have a nice day all!

172.8 today.  Back into the middle of maintenance range.  

Rode my first 100 mile bike ride yesterday (108 miles to be accurate!).  It went well, a little sore today, but nothing much, really.  It was a beautiful day - my Garmin registered up to 81 degrees at times (considering the highs were 30s last week and it snowed a few days ago that's pretty crazy - Welcome to Minnesota!).  It was windy (25 mph gusts) which wore us down a bit, but overall a very lovely day and a good start to the season of endurance events!

Here i am at the finish:

Looking good! Wow! A hundred miles plus! Kudos to you!.

You look fantastic! Glad the ride went well!

Nice job Tom!  You are totally rockin' that spandex!  Sounds like you were totally prepared and had a great time. Congrats!

Fiona 

I think you asked about some stats for the ride...

108 miles

7h 17m of riding time 

14.8 mph average speed (slow, but we had a team member who was hurting so we hung together to help him through)

4,600 feet of climbing

4,000 calories expended

Avg heart rate 128 bpm

Normalized Power: 179 W

TSS: 629.5 (training stress score - sort of an overall effort score)

Oh, and the wind was gusting up to 25 mph, seemingly always head-on.  I hate wind.

Yes, as an outdoor rock climber, I share your hatred of wind! 

Thanks for the full report.  It looks like you had more elevation gain than you originally thought.  I hope that wasn't too bad of a surprise. 

How did you keep yourself fueled up during the ride? Did you have to eat at all? If so, did you just bring a bunch of Quest bars or were there other things that helped you?  I did a hard hike this weekend and had to eat and drink a lot (and definitely have more carbs, but not a lot more) so I wouldn't run out of energy.  I'd be curious to see if you have a similar story.

Congrats again!

Fiona

The one big hill we had to take on is the one we use for training, so I knew what to expect and how to pace myself.  We got to come down a similar hill and I got to 35mph, so that was fun for a minute.

My coach wants us to do carbs for the rides.  He's a hard core endurance guy (did the Furnace 508 last year, 508 miles no-sleep... in 42 hours, 39 minutes through the scorching dessert.  Yikes.

Anyway, he has definite ideas on nutrition, and they mostly involve carbs during the ride.  

Pre-ride I had some pancakes.  During the ride I stuck mostly with Gatorade (full calorie), Hammer Perpetuum and Hammer Gels, as they go down easy.  I had a pastry at lunch.  

Interesting - i ate the least and probably drank the least - my 3 companions all ended up with leg cramps near the end, and I didn't.  I should probably work harder on eating more but I really don't want to get Mr. Sleeve upset, and I know fluids/gels go down really easy. Protein is better if I want to eat less - but burning 4000 calories on this ride (on top of my usual 2000 BMR/Daily life calories) - well there was no realistic way I was going to eat anywhere near that.  I've experimented a bit with carbs during long exercise, and it seems that they don't trigger me like carbs while sitting around. Probably because they get used instantly, and don't cause a spike in blood glucose that, I think, is the reason for triggers, often.

Immediately post event i switched back to high-protein with a quest bar and a couple ounces of burger, and lots of fluids.  

For longer events, taking in energy will probably be more of an issue... i'll have to get in the habit of consuming more calories while on the bike, but at least for 7-8 hours, I really didn't need much.

Thanks Tom.  Pancakes and pastry sound like a nice trade for 100 miles worth of work.  It's interesting that you're not triggered by all the carbs, and I agree, it's probably because you used up all the calories immediately without letting them hang around. 

Thanks for sharing!

Fiona